Dearest Odyssians,
Odie, my hairless cat, practically gnawed my face off this morning until I woke up, at six am, and opened the window for him to bird watch. As part of what is fast becoming his new daily routine, I also have to cover his bald body with his fuzzy blanket just so, or else he’s too cold to sit in the ‘chill’ morning air. Today’s artic temperature before sunrise: 65° Fahrenheit.

Did I ever mention I go to bed at four am? well, I go to sleep at four am. Every night. And now I’m up. Blogging. While odie watches birds flit past his screened-in perched.

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” – franz kafka